This powerful collection, depicting the grim realities of the four-year struggle for the Ypres salient, showcases the work of the contemporary combat artists and illustrators from the Great War era. Included here are the works of serious artists, propagandists, illustrators and humourists. The result is a stunning and vivid graphic record of life and death in the most infamous campaign of the Great War, as reported to contemporary audiences at a time when the events of the Great War were still unfolding.

During the Great War artists and illustrators produced a highly accurate visual record of the fleeting moments the bulky cameras couldn't reproduce. These works form a body of war reportage that are as valid as the written word. Today, the work of the combat illustrators and the official war artists from the Great War era is overlooked by historians in favour of photographs, but these illustrations are nonetheless important, as they provide a contemporary record of hand-to-hand fighting, trench raids, aerial dogfights, sea battles, desperate last stands, night actions and cavalry charges

A magnificent collection of illustrations commemorating the Ypres conflict. As we get further and further into the 100-year anniversary of this horrific war, so the publishers, in particular Pen and Sword, seem to be discovering and publishing photographs, facsimile reproductions of newspapers, drawings etc., that illustrate what happened to our ancestors and the people they were fighting. Pen and Sword already publish the very finest pictorial history of the first world war, with the 1914 and 1915 volumes already available. This new series of Illustrated War Reports is a worthy adjunct to that series.

Books Monthly - Paul Norman

About Coda Books

From 2012, Pen and Sword Digital will be providing viewers with a brand new selection of films (and books) from Coda Books. Split into two series, Hitler’s War Machine and World War II From Primary Sources, they will give readers a chance to see the original footage from the events of the Second World War, as well as original propaganda material and films used by both sides during the conflict.

About Bob Carruthers

Bob Carruthers is one of the UK’s leading military historians and is famous in the UK for the bestselling book The Wehrmacht in Russia, published by Pen & Sword, which topped Amazon bestseller charts in 2012. Bob is also an Emmy AwardTM winning filmmaker whose work in the form of series such as Battlefield, Line of Fire, and Weapons of War are channel staples that are shown on BBC, Channel 4, Discovery, PBS and numerous other channels around the world.